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Four solid games in London

Vladimir Kramnik (Ray Morris-Hill from the official site)

The sixth round will be remembered for the distinct lack of winning chances in all four games. In the clash of World champions, Viswanathan Anand sacrificed the exchange for a pawn or two, against which Kramnik gave back material for activity which led to a complete decimation of the queenside and equality.
Hikaru Nakamura still leads in a virtually unchanged table.

After having already lost three games, Michael Adams was clearly determined to keep things solid against Levon Aronian. In fact the game was the driest so far this week, with easy equality for Black and a totally symmetrical structure.

The pawn structure in Viswanathan Anand-Vladimir Kramnik was also rather symmetric, but here the tension was maintained due to the presence of many pieces on the board. Kramnik had an annoyingly active knight which induced the exchange sacrifice from Anand. Then Kramnik sought to activate the other knight rather than count material. The dust settled and there was complete equality.

Luke McShane tried to avoid mainstream theory with an early kingside fianchetto against the Sicilian Defence. A short tactical sequance led to all the queenside pawns being exchanged.

In the all-English tussle between David Howell and Nigel Short, a c3-Sicilian transposed to the French Defence, an opening with which Short has great experience. Howell maintained a nominally superior pawn structure, so Short pushed in the centre leading to pawn exchanges and ultimately a dead drawn endgame.

Not the most exciting round, by any means!

The sixth round:

White

Country

Rating

Result

Black

Country

Rating

Moves

Opening details

Viswanathan Anand

IND

2811

0.5-0.5

Vladimir Kramnik

RUS

2800

39

Queen's Gambit Declined 5.Bf4

Michael Adams

ENG

2734

0.5-0.5

Levon Aronian

ARM

2802

34

Spanish Berlin

Luke McShane

ENG

2671

0.5-0.5

Hikaru Nakamura

USA

2758

31

Sicilian 3.g3

David Howell

ENG

2633

0.5-0.5

Nigel Short

ENG

2698

36

French Tarrasch

Magnus Carlsen (Norway, 2826) sat out the sixth round whilst helping out with the live commentary.

Here is the table after six rounds (noting that some players have only played five games):